My wife and I have many of the same interests. When it comes to my siblings, we all pretty much went in our own directions, although most of us still have much in common. My oldest brother played Minor League baseball for a few years then, realizing he wasn't going to make it into the Majors, he went became on to become a teacher, from which he took early retirement while still in his 40s. Although he has always had a strong interest in a whole host of sports, I have almost no interest in sports, yet he is the one that I enjoy talking to the most. Since he was twelve when I was born, and I was only five when he started college, and his brief baseball career, much of our relationship has been as adults, as he has visited me here and at other places where I have lived, and we've shared a timeshare with he and his wife. He lives in Menominee, Michigan, a few miles south of where we grew up. My second-oldest brother enlisted in the Army after high school, leaving after four years to major in forestry. He spent his career bouncing between the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where he was stationed in Minnesota, most of that time on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. He is retired now, and living on the land that we grew up on, which I sold to him, by the way, because my father's second wife sold it to me for next to nothing after our father died. She was willing to just give it to me. That's another story. I like him well enough but he enlisted when I was about twelve or so, and we've never lived near one another since, so I can't say that I know him very well. He has a Facebook account but he and his wife share the same account and I think I'm talking with her most of the time when I think I'm talking to him. I see him every ten or fifteen years when I visit home, but that's about it. My third brother is only three years older than me, and we shared a couple of friends when we were kids, but not generally at the same time. It would seem that we'd have the most in common, but he was turned into a flaming liberal during six years at Michigan State University, where he majored in social work, which is another thing likely to turn someone into a liberal. We're brothers so we like one another well enough, but we rarely agree on anything. As far as interests go, while he is the most well educated of my siblings, with a Master's Degree, he takes pride in the fact that he hasn't read a book since he left college. He is living a few towns north of where we grew up. My younger brother also enlisted in the Army after high school, spent some time in South Korea, and some time in Germany, and came back as an alcoholic. Unable to find work or keep a job after he left the Army, I invited him to stay with my son and me while I was in California because there were plenty of jobs available there, at that time. However, although I set him up for a couple of jobs where I knew he'd be hired, he came back from the interviews saying that they wouldn't hire him. Instead, as I soon learned, he sat around drinking, and I couldn't have that. Since he wasn't interested in working anyhow, I bought him a ticket back to Michigan, where there were three brothers who could look after him. As far as I am aware, he has been sober now for about twenty years, so I'm pretty happy for him and enjoy seeing him when I do, but that's like every ten or fifteen years. Although he has never played sports, he loves watching it, and that's not something that I share. I enjoy watching a Major League baseball game if I can be at the stadium, but I don't follow any teams and can't watch more than fifteen minutes of a game on television. In other words, it's hard for me to know how our interests may differ because we've mostly lived more than a thousand miles away from one another. Actually, I guess I'm the only one who lived more than a thousand miles away because my other brothers are all still in the UP of Michigan. My oldest brother winters in Florida, and that's usually when I see him. Either he will swing by here or we'll see each other while my wife and I are in our timeshare in Virginia. I'm the only one who spends any time on the Internet. My younger brother is on Facebook a lot, but my older brothers aren't.
I grew up in a musical family. My dad drummed, professionally. My mom sang Broadway show tunes, my sister was a folkie. I became a full time musician, and made my fortune at it. My dad had a shop. I had a shop. My grandfather was a real estate tycoon. I became one. My dad was an incurable womanizer. I am/was the same. My dad liked to drink, never having any problems with it. My mom didn't drink. I don't drink, except a beer, maybe one every two months. I am big on genetics governing a lot in our life. There's the old, "The fruit doesn't fall too far from the tree," thing. There's also the, "Nature versus Nurture." I side with Nature. Reading some of y'all's replies, here, it seems that what I see as a strong genetic/natural component in life does not apply in your cases. Either that, or you never tapped into your "inner realities." Interesting.
Well, my half-brother, basically the only family I have left, has absolutely no interest in western stuff or rodeo. I 100% liked what I looked like in my cowboy hat, etc., sitting on my horse with a rope in my hand. My wife, who started wearing a black felt cowboy hat while square dancing in the late 90's and was the only lady that did wear one. She would also wear it to country-western nightclubs for line dancing. She had a great interest in rodeo, but her family had very little-to-none. Now, having been married to me for 20 years, she has learned a tremendous amount about rodeo. Coming from her mom shooting a very nice white-tail buck deer in Michigan, she grew to have an interest in firearms. Took very little coaxing to her for us to get her her first firearm/rifle. Funny that, the professional rodeo contestants that we use to follow when we lived in Colorado before, are all now retired and their sons are now competing in the same evens their dads did. Now, that IS "keeping it in the family".
I think that my family all have a lot in common, even though each person has their own individuality. Probably, a lot of that is due to the time we spent together when the kids were growing up. I always had my .22 rifle, and I taught the kids how to shoot once they were old enough to learn, we went fishing and swimming together, and all enjoyed taking long trips in the car and singing every single song that we could think of. We lived in the country, so they learned about taking care of livestock and riding horseback was something that they did from the time they could sit with me on the horse. We had ponies for all of the kids, and also a pony cart that they enjoyed driving up and down the country roads nearby. Even though we all have different lives now, these are still things that we all enjoy and remember happily, and when we are all together, it is usually a happy time with lots of laughing and fun. This is Mike and Robin riding Soxie around in the pasture, when we lived in Kent, Washington. Robin is not quite 2, and Mike would be about 4, probably.
Nothing in common what’s so ever I’m the eldest of 8 , I left home at 18 ,brother 2 years younger than me left home at 15 ( I’ve not seen him more than a dozen times since he was 15) he’d be 73 now . Next brother died at 14 ( when i was 18 ) The other 5 kids were step sisters / brothers aged about 11 down to a year old when I left home because they had no one responsible ( after I left ) to take care of them 24 hours a day while parents were at the hotel for hours ,they all eventually ended up in foster care ,so I didn’t see them till they were in their late teens so they were strangers to me . All of the 5 ended up involved in either drinking way to much ,smoking ,or drugs , 3 are now deceased As for myself I’ve never smoked ...Never touched alcohol either so I was branded a “strange “ by the younger siblings for not at least wanting to try smoking or getting drunk It just didn’t appeal to me .....I hated the smell of both. I was interested in working to better my life ...buy my own home something the others lacked due to addictions of one kind or anther ....One sister who died at 50 .. 15 years ago ....her total wealth was a wrist watch